Sure,' I admitted. 'I'm on my way. I see that.' But what I wanted
'em to slip me was a little info as to where was I going.

"Well, they talked. What did I hope for? What did I want? What did I
expect to get out of it? And I told 'em. Well, that was a pretty large
order for a girl of my station. My station didn't figure, I told 'em;
we'd leave that out of it. And I told 'em so plainly that they neglected
to refer to that any more.

"But they took another tack instead. The things that I'd mentioned were
mere material things! Like that--scornful--as if they weren't worth
mentioning at all. 'Merely material!' And there was a better world to
live in--oh, my, yes--the world of the spirit.

"'Do you live in it?' I asked. 'Do you?' They wore sealskin coats, when
it wasn't mink or chinchilla. They were driving downtown every day in
their own closed cars to urge me to be content with the things of the
spirit. And when I realized that--No, I wasn't sore. I was just hep,
that's all.

"'I'll try Broadway,' I said then. 'If there's nothing, after all, in
this climb-though-the-rocks-be-rugged stuff, no great harm done. I'm
still young. But why waste more valuable time? I'll try Broadway,' I
said. 'I'll have a whirl at the primrose path.'

"They didn't believe me at first. They thought I was just bluffing, just
talking because I was discouraged. So they talked themselves some
more--a whole lot more. Beautiful words--but they didn't mean anything.
Not to me.

"Did any of 'em say: 'Sure, I understand. You're young and pretty, and
it's natural you should crave such things. Here's my last year's coat
and a perfectly miserable old last year's model car'? Did they? Don't
make me laugh! Not that they woulda missed them. Nothing like that!

"And if they'd only come out flat in the beginning and admitted: 'Sure,
it's a fight--we know that--a finish fight between women like you and
women like us,' I could have liked 'em for it. If they'd said: 'We want
these things, so do you, and only men can buy 'em--take 'em if you can,'
that woulda been all right with me. But did they? You know the answer.
They were telling _me_ not to rough it, while _they_ all the while, every
chance they got, were hitting in the clinches! They were chirping to me,
'Oh, see how lovely the things of the spirit are,' while they were
hanging with a death grip to everything material that they could get
their hands on. I'd been hone